On Death Island, October 8, 1916, the air itself became the enemy. German forces carried out the largest gas attack of the First World War on Latvian territory at the Ikšķile bridgehead fortifications. The hardest blow fell on the Russian Imperial Army’s 173rd Kamenets Infantry Regiment—240 soldiers died, others were severely poisoned, and the invisible front reached Ikšķile’s civilians and the surrounding landscape as well. The place the Latvian Riflemen already called Death Island justified its name literally that day.

Death Island was a bridgehead on the left bank of the Daugava opposite Ikšķile, fortified by the Russian Imperial Army after the retreat of 1915. Latvian Riflemen battalions defended the position for 119 days, and it later became one of Latvia’s most vivid First World War memorial sites.